Trying to run archlinux image of docker-compose but its just exits with code 0

Question

I am trying to start archlinux image and later add volumes so I can test my scripts on configuring Arch Linux. But I am stuck with starting the compose. If I have restart: always it just restarts all the time when I comment it out, then it gives me the exited with code 0.

version: "3.7"

services:
  arch:
    image: archlinux/base
    # restart: always

I start compose with

$docker-compose up

and the output is

Creating network "docker-compose_default" with the default driver
Creating docker-compose_arch_1 ... done
Attaching to docker-compose_arch_1
docker-compose_arch_1 exited with code 0

What might be missing?

Any help is much appreciated. I have being stuck with this problem for quite a while.

Answer 1

The base image you are using at the moment executes /usr/bin/bash as a default command which requires allocation of a tty to keep running (or you will have to change the command to any long running task).

See what happens with docker itself in first place.

Starting a container interactively works as expected:

$ docker run -it --rm archlinux/base
[root@6642c519e328 /]# more /etc/issue 
Arch Linux \r (\l)

[root@6642c519e328 /]# exit

Now let's try to run a container in the background:

$ docker run -d --name testarch archlinux/base
915ff11b0c93bd795eb62d37cd2d9928638560d9accfb2e5ba061b3ef19c0235
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
$ # Hoho, it's not running
$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                                               COMMAND                 CREATED             STATUS                     PORTS               NAMES
915ff11b0c93        archlinux/base                                      "/usr/bin/bash"         8 seconds ago       Exited (0) 7 seconds ago                       testarch
$ docker rm testarch 
testarch

If we do the same with a tty allocation:

$ docker run -d --tty --name testarch archlinux/base
d160a3d7e18c3d094f47577b448a11808eb30ce7ba8fad4cde882818f248f207
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
d160a3d7e18c        archlinux/base      "/usr/bin/bash"     5 seconds ago       Up 4 seconds                            testarch
$ # Tada ! It runs, we can now attach to it.
$ docker exec -it testarch bash
[root@d160a3d7e18c /]# more /etc/issue
Arch Linux \r (\l)

[root@d160a3d7e18c /]# exit
$ docker rm -f testarch

Now back to your docker-compose.yml. In your current test phase, you need to allocate a tty (that you will be able to drop later if you cmd/entry-point does not require one anymore).

version: "3.7"

services:
  arch:
    image: archlinux/base
    tty: true

For time being, the bash command is not sending anything in the container log. I will start in detached mode so the command returns once the container is started and I can use the same terminal (launch a second terminal if you still want to to run docker-compose in foreground mode)

$ pwd
/tmp/slack_test
$ docker-compose up -d
Creating network "slack_test_default" with the default driver
Creating slack_test_arch_1 ... done
$ docker-compose exec arch bash
[root@10f138d98782 /]# more /etc/issue 
Arch Linux \r (\l)

[root@10f138d98782 /]# exit
exit
$ docker-compose down
Stopping slack_test_arch_1 ... done
Removing slack_test_arch_1 ... done
Removing network slack_test_default
$